Despite a bumpy start and hitches along the way, this journey is more than worth it.
This United Players production is the premiere of a new adaptation, by Naomi Wright and director Sarah Rodgers, of Charles Dickens’s novella, A Cricket on the Hearth.
The story, which unfolds at Christmastime, was more popular than Dickens’s A Christmas Carol for several years. It’s about the importance of domestic kindness. John Peerybingle, an unsophisticated but deeply good man, is married to the much younger — and cleverer — Dot. Dot is shocked when she finds out that her old schoolfriend May is to be married to Tackleton, a meanspirited toymaker.
In the subplot, Tackleton’s employee, Caleb, tries to keep his blind daughter, Bertha, happy by lying to her about their poverty, creating a false sense of the décor of their home, for instance. This family is also scarred by the death of Bertha’s brother Edward in “the golden South Americas.”
About that rocky start. This version of the story is a musical (it features original music and lyrics by Christopher King), but the opening three numbers of this production are worrisomely underpowered: there’s just not enough sound coming from the cast. Subsequent musical numbers enjoy more force, so opening night jitters may have been a factor. In the second song, “Welcome Home”, blocking is certainly an issue. The busy choreography often leaves actors singing upstage, which means their voices are lost. Shelley Stewart Hunt is listed as the movement consultant.
Rodgers and Wright have retained too much third-person narration off the top, and the set-up is still unclear. It took me forever to figure out that Caleb was Tackleton’s employee, for instance.
Then Tackleton arrived in his full villainous glory, and the evening started to cohere for me. Tackleton’s witty introductory number, “Tackleton’s Song (Toys)”, is all about his goal of teaching children that life is cruel and, in a scene-stealing and appropriately over-the-top performance, which he maintains throughout the evening, Kazz Leskard does an excellent job of selling it.
Leskard’s isn’t the only fantastic performance in this production. Playing both John and Dot’s dog, Boxer, and May’s pretentious mother Mrs. Fielding, Vincent Keats is a knockout. The absurdity of Keats’s Mrs. Fielding made me want to see that he’d do with Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell. And I adored Keats’s take on Boxer’s wildly openhearted empathy.
I also want to sing the praises of Cassie Unger, who’s playing both May and Tilly Slowboy, the teenage nanny who cares for John and Dot’s infant son. Unger’s work as May is credibly naturalistic and her portrait of the emotive Tilly hilariously unleashed. (There’s a wonderfully transgressive convention that has Tilly slinging the baby around with no concern whatsoever for its safety.)
And I’ve got to say the costumes have been beautifully designed by Mara Gottler: standouts include the humble beauty of Dot’s all-grey ensemble, and the inventiveness of Boxer’s anthropomorphized wardrobe.
Still, as I said, there were other hitches along the way. Gordon Law (Caleb) struggled with his lines on opening night. Emma Houghton (Dot) has a sweet voice, but she’s not projecting it. And, on opening night, Charlie Deagnon (John) had some trouble with his pitch.
Nonetheless, MOST importantly, the heart of The Cricket on the Hearth stays pure. Yes, it’s sentimental, but it’s also movingly — sometimes startlingly — generous.
In terms of their acting, I completely bought Houghton’s Dot and Deagnon’s John, so I was invested in the play’s central relationship. I won’t give away the plot, but there’s a crisis in their marriage and John’s response to it is astonishinglylargehearted — by today’s standards, never mind the gender politics of Victorian England. It’s very moving.
Kindness informs the whole package, including Boxer’s instinctive empathy for Bertha. And then there’s the cricket, a Victorian symbol of domestic harmony. In this adaptation, the cricket in John and Dot’s home becomes a violinist (December Goodkey, opening night) chirping away on her violin. It’s a sweet reminder of the sanctuary so many of us — so many in the world — are longing for these days.
Yes, The Cricket on the Hearth is sentimental and unrealistic, massively so: the story includes two character redemptions that are completely unearned, but who cares? They’re entertaining and enthusiastic, so they feel good.
Novelist William Makepeace Thackery loved the novella, even though it’s been criticized for its sentimentality from the start. “To us, it appears it is a good Christmas book,” he wrote, “illuminated with extra gas, crammed with extra bonbons, French plums and sweetness.” And he offered a reminder to those looking for realism: “This story is no more a real story than Peerybingle is a real name!”
Exactly. Go for the good stuff.
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH The novella by Charles Dickens adapted for the stage by Naomi Wright and Sarah Rodgers. Original music and lyrics by Christopher King. Directed by Sarah Rodgers. A United Players production at the Jericho Arts Centre until December 21. (Tickets and information)
PHOTO CREDIT: (Photo of the cast by Nancy Caldwell)
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